William A. Trammell/Hunter Genealogy Report

This a genealogical report on my great grandfather William A. Hunter/Trammell.  William was the son of Jason Henderson Hunter and Rebeca Trammell.  I plan to take each progenitor each each of my and my wife's line and generation and pass on what information I have.  This project may wear itself out before it even gets started good.  Hopefully not.   

Being born out of wedlock and raised by his maternal family William used as his last name his mother's last name - TRAMMELL.  For the first twenty five years of his life he went by the name William A. TRAMMELL.  About 1867, about the same time a murder charge was against him he and his family left Macon County, North Carolina and he changed his name to his paternal name (which most Americans take for granted) William A. HUNTER.

     After William changed his last name to HUNTER he and a half brother had the same name.

     It is believed that the "A." was either the initial for Alan or Alanarine.

     Before William was eight years old his mother had died.  On the 1850 Census he was living with his grandfather Jacob B. TRAMMELL, grandmother Polly (a Cherokee Indian) and an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

         His grandmother Polly was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. therefore his mother Rebecca was half Indian, and William was one-quarter. 

     Grandmother Mary  "Polly" Hogshead Trammell drowned in the Little Tennessee River in Macon County, south of Franklin, while working with her fish traps between 1850 and 1860, when William was between eight and seventeen. while tending to her fish baskets.

     In September of 1860, when William was seventeen, his grandfather Jacob B. TRAMMELL died.  Evidently, at the time of his death he owned more than he owned, therefore, his property had to be auctioned off.

     Apparently, this broke the family up.  They scattered their separate ways.

     It is unknown where William stayed for two years.  I believe that he stayed in the area and courted his wife to be Emaline RAY (Apr 19 1846 - May 11 1925), daughter of John REA/RAY, wagon maker, and Nancy Sumner RAY.  One oral story is that her parents disapproved of William and would lock her in a room to prevent this courtship but Emaline would slip out the window and see him anyway.

     William joined the Confederacy.  On, 1 May 1862, he enlisted in Macon County, North Carolina, into the 39th North Carolina Infantry, Company I.  He was nineteen years old.  He enlisted with the name he had used since birth - William A. TRAMMELL.

     The first year of his war efforts has yet been uncovered.  On 19 May 1863, he was admitted to the First Mississippi C. S. A. Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, for Febris Intermiten Quotidian.  In layman terms he was having a reoccurring fever daily. He returned to duty 25 June 1863 after spending a month and six days in the hospital.

     While on furlough, 19 April 1864, William A. TRAMMELL and Emaline RAY married.  William was twenty-one and Emaline was eighteen just one week.

     Shortly after they were married William returned to his Unit.  The Unit went to be part of the "Battle of Kennesaw Mountain",   near Marietta, Georgia.

Note- About one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five years later over a hundred of William and Emaline's descendants would be living within a few miles of Kennesaw Mountain.

     William's unit, the 39th Regiment, Company I, was fixed on the crest between Big Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain.

     His bosses:

     Corps    -  Loring

     Division -  French

     Brigade  -  Ector

     William and two of his friends were at a spring kneeling down drinking water.  Shots.  One of his friends dropped with a bullet hole in his head. He and his remaining living friend got up to run.  More shots. William was shot in the leg.  He fell while his friend fled.  The boys in blue ran by him in pursuit of his friend, evidently assuming he was dead.

     According to the records William was shot in the knee July 18, 1864.  That, incidentally, was the same day that the President of the Confederacy fired General Joseph E. Johnston of that campaign and replaced him with General Hood.

     On his questionnaire for a pension a question was what date he was wounded and William replied "July 18, 1864".  Another question asked where was his unit at the time he was shot and he replied "Peachtree Creek" (Atlanta) which is historically accurate.  Unfortunately, the questionnaire did not ask the applicant where he was when he shot, only where his unit was, which could be two different places.

A note:  There are eight active springs on Kennesaw Mountain and several dried up ones.

     Peachtree Creek or Kennesaw Mountain? Or Chickamauga, Georgia?

Ms Thelma Swanson, a TRAMMELL/RAY descendent/researcher, found that the North Carolina Troops Roster, page 108, shows that he was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia.

     The Chickamauga Battle was held in the Northwest corner of Georgia, September 19th and 20th, 1863.  I personally think this

could be another William TRAMMELL listed (Mrs. Swanson later stated that it could have been William K. TRAMMELL wounded at Chicamauga).

     On August 6, 1864, William appeared on a receipt roll at Marshall Hospital in Columbus, Georgia.

     He was put on wounded furlough.  He told his grandchildren that he recuperated in a private home in Andersonville, Georgia.

     Andersonville was not far from the Marshall Hospital in Columbus (about 20 to 30 miles).  The Andersonville Confederate Center had the facilities for a hospital and a prison.  The cruel conditions at Andersonville Prison still shock people. Men were forced to suffer and die in painful and cruel ways just for fighting in a cause they believed in or had to fight.  Some of the prisons in the North were just as bad - one that comes to mind is Camp Chase, Ohio.

     Another academic question:  Which Andersonville?  During the Civil War times there was a Andersonville Community in Cobb County at the northern border of Cherokee County, where Highway 92 is today, only about three or four miles east of where he eventually settled in Woodstock.

     He said that in that private home where he recuperated the lady that nursed him was named Amanda Jane.  A few years later he would honor that lady by naming his only daughter after her.

     After he got well enough he somehow gained possession of a mule and walked (or limped) back home to Macon County, North Carolina, which if the Andersonville was in Cobb-Cherokee County it would be slightly over a hundred miles away, if the Andersonville was in Southwest Georgia it would be close to three hundred miles away.

     Apparently, he arrived home before November 1864 (based on the incubation period and birth date of their first born Charles).  He was about twenty-two when he returned from the War.

     For the next couple of years William and Emaline lived just south of Franklin, North Carolina and had two children.

     Posey C. Wild was a close friend.  He was the close friend who was with William at the time he was shot by Union Soldiers by the spring, and was lucky to flee with his life.  After that event,

     10 August 1864, Posey was promoted to Second Lieutenant.

     Another close person to William was his uncle Jacob Van Buren "Van" TRAMMELL.  Van was only a few years older than William and they lived in the same household during their childhood lives.  With  William and Van living in the same house; with the same last name; and close to the same age - some thought they were brothers.

With that, this story has been handed down through the generations in the RAY Family:

     "Van TRAMMELL and his brother William were trying to collect pay for a horse that had been stolen from William.  The man refused to pay. William hit the man with a gun and killed him.  Van left for Arkansas and William for Georgia."

The man who William and his uncle Van Trammell killed was named Lambert.  - Surname TRAMMELL from nformation submitted by Darlene Lackey. June 18, 2004, posting no. 1405.

    Actually, Van went to Round Prairie Township, Benton County, Arkansas.

     The William A. HUNTER family went to Texas.  In Texas, William acquired "twelve or fifteen" tracts of land and tried being a cattle rancher.  He had problems supplying water and had to give it up.

     It is unknown where or when they ranched in Texas.  We do know that one of their children, Frank Paris Hunter (my grandfather), was born in Granbury, Hood County, Texas, in 1879.

     A little puzzle:  Based on a Family Bible Frank Paris Hunter was born in Granbury, Texas.  It has been handed down orally that Frank Paris was named after Paris, Texas.  Paris, Texas, is about one hundred and fifty miles east of Granbury.  Not close enough for namesakes - but apparently so.

     1879 was also the year William and his family came back east and settled in Cherokee County, Georgia, less than ten miles away from Kennesaw Mountain, where he fought in the Civil War fifteen years earlier.

     They first settled in the Kelp Community, which was in the area of what is presently the vicinity of the intersection of State Highway 92 and Bells Ferry Road.

     William joined the Masonic Lodge which was located just a few miles east of Woodstock, which was the community of Anderson-    ville.  This "Andersonville" was discussed earlier the possible  "Andersonville" William recuperated from his Civil War wounds.

     When their oldest son Charlie grew up he opened a store appropriately called "Hunter's Store".  He was also the Postmaster of Kelp.  The Kelp Post Office was in a section of Hunter's Store.

     Charlie also wrote a newspaper column of local news.  The name of the column was also "Hunter's Store".

     William A. HUNTER's son William Jason HUNTER was killed in June of 1896, at the age of twenty-one, in a hunting accident.  William Jason when killed, had a pregnant wife (Fannie) and a daughter.  William A. and Emaline had their daughter-in-law and granddaughter move in with them. They took up their late son's responsibility of providing food and shelter.  The child that Fanny was pregnant with was named Lois.  They lived with them until their death.

     William A. HUNTER was also raised by his grandparents because of a parent dying.  Which may be why William did this deed, because he knew the feeling.  Again, history repeats itself.

     Although it appears that William fled Macon County, North Carolina, in the 1860s, around the turn of the century he would return each year during apple season to see old friends and relatives, and of course to get a load of apples.

     About 1908, William and his oldest son Charlie bought land in Woodstock, on Main Street, just a couple of blocks south of the center of town.  They both built houses on the property.

     Now (1998), the house is a store for rental company.

     An act of Congress was passed in 1910 authorizing a soldier's pension for men who fought in the Civil War, for the North as well as the South.  That same year, going on sixty-eight, William applied for his pension.  On his application he stated that he was in Company I of the 39th Regiment (Infantry) of North Carolina.  The application was turned down because no one by the name of William A. HUNTER was on the roster.

     The roster did show a William A. TRAMMELL who enlisted on 1 May 1862.  He and Posey C. Wild enlisted the same day.  And at the Kennesaw Mountain Park, on the list of all those who fought, his name as TRAMMELL is listed.

     He had a slight dilemma.  He could admit he changed his name after the war.  But what would be the consequences?

     His solution worked.  He gathered up three witnesses to swear to a questionnaire affidavit that he had not only fought but also was wounded in the War.

The witnesses:

1.  Posey C. WILD on the questionnaire said he had known William all his life "and have seen him occasionally since he left  this county in 1867".  Posey also wrote that William lived in Woodstock, Georgia, since 1879, and still occasionally saw him "through my relation living there".

2.  Doctor T. W. MCCLOUD said he witnessed William wounded in the knee on or near Kennesaw Mountain during what is known as the

    Georgia Campaign.

3.  George A. CAMPBELL said he saw William wounded in the knee or near the knee, the bullet tearing away much of the muscle and going through the leaders of the upper part of the leg about the knee.

     In his latter years his grandchildren remembered him walking stooped over, carrying a cane, and speaking in a deep whispery voice.

 CONFEDERATE NORTH CAROLINA TROOPS

39th Regiment, North Carolina Infantry

39th Infantry Regiment was organized at Camp Patton, Asheville, North Carolina, in July, 1861, as a five company battalion. In November the unit moved to "Camp Hill" near Gooch Mountain where it was increased to eight companies. In February, 1862, it was ordered to Knoxville, Tennessee, where two more companies were added. Its members were from the counties of Cherokee, Macon, Jackson, Buncombe, and Clay. The 39th took part in the Cumberland Gap operations, then saw action in the Battle of Perryville. Assigned to Walthall's, McNair's, and Reynold's Brigade, it fought with the Army of Tennessee from Murfreesboro to Atlanta, then endured Hood's winter campaign in Tennessee. In 1865 it shared in the defense of Mobile. This regiment lost 2 killed, 36 wounded, and 6 missing at Murfreesboro and had 10 killed, 90 wounded, and 3 missing at Chickamauga. During the Atlanta Campaign, May 18 to September 5, it reported 16 killed, 57 wounded, and 10 missing. On May 4, 1865, it surrendered. The field officers were Colonel David Coleman, Lieutenant Colonels Hugh H. Davidson and Francis A. Reynolds, and Major T.W. Peirce.

Robert (?) moved to Mr. Hunter's Friday, Dec 17, 1915.

- From Minnie Durham Westmoreland's journal, page 4.

Pa sold his house to Arck? McCleskey Oct 9, 1917, and moved in with Mr. Hunter in Woodstock.

- From Minnie Durham Westmoreland's journal, p9

Mr William Hunter and Mr Buck Medford died in the Fall of 1928.

- From Minnie Durham Westmoreland's journal, p19

William and Emaline are buried at Carmel Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga.  One day a couple years ago after a storm I heard the weather did a lot of damage in the Woodstock area, in the area I checked out the cemetery.  The church's steeple was resting long-wise on William's and Emaline's grave.

William lived 85 years and Emaline 79

William and Emaline married 18 April 1864, in Macon County, NC.  After they were married he returned to his Confederare unit near Marietta, Ga for the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, where he was wounded.

Emeline is the daughter of John and Nancy Sumner Ray, she was the 7th of 11 children.

They had the following children:

1.  Charles Jefferson Hunter (1865 - 1954).

2.  Arminta Jane Hunter (1866 - 1955)

3.  John Rafas Hunter (1870 - 1955)

4.  William Jason Hunter (1875 - 1896)

5  Frank Paris Hunter  (1879 - 1950)

6  Oscar Ray Hunter (1884 - 1963)

7  Arthur Riley Hunter (1884 - 1967)

November 22, 1963.

 

November 22, 1963. One of those days the Earth stood still and you will remember what you were doing when you heard the news of the John F. Kennedy assignation in Dallas.

Brothers WC & Ed Hunter

 Brothers: My uncle W.C. (Waltter Clairence) Hunter and my dad Ed Hunter. W.C. was a war hero in WWII. He was injured in the war, Africa I think, and the medical people had to put a metal plate in his head.

He had a hard time adapting to civilian life, even homeless at times. His nickname on the streets of Marietta was “Peanut”. He spent his last years in the Veterans’ Hospital in Milledgeville.

Stewart's Pure Station

 This is Base Camp Restaurant at the foot of Kennesaw Mountain. Before it was Mountain Biscuits. We had breakfast there this morning after a doctor’s visit. This building was a Pure Service Station. When we were in our preteen years Van Callaway, Sam Carsley and myself walked to and up to the top of Kennesaw Mountain as we did sometimes. Afterwards we stopped at this Pure For refreshments. A country store was inside. Behind the counter was our math teacher Dallas Stewart. He told us his parents owned the store. Dallas and his wife, also a teacher, lived in the basement. Years later I was talking to my mother-in-law’s friend, Babara Tilley, who lived in our neighborhood, and she told me she and Dallas were siblings. She has since died. It’s a small world.

Sight Seeing

 

I took this picture of the United Nations in the early 1970s. We got to tour the world famous center and its chambers and all, which includes their post office. We thought it would be unique to mail UN postcards with UN postal stamps from there. We made our selections of stamps and cards and got in line to the postal clerks’ windows. As I remember there were about 3 or 4 people ahead of us in line.

The lady ahead of the line dealing with the postal clerk was having a hard time trying to decide which stamps to go on which card. She was a perfectionist at our expense.

Finally a man in line hollered out something like, “Jeeez! We don’t have all day lady!” The lady told him (and us) that it was her right to pick what she wants. Then he shouted even louder that the rest of us have things to do today. The postal clerk’s face was non-committal.

Our expression was not so unexpressive. We ate it up. We saw a typical New York resident shout at a stranger and kept on unforgiving shouting. All very typical NYC people. Authentic realism!

It was almost as good as the “UNTO THESE HILLS” play at the Cherokee Indian Reservation in the Smokies, North Carolina

Woodstock

 

WE WERE IN WOODSTOCK 50 YEARS AGO!! It is true, we were there. Man, it was so crowded you could hardly move. But that is the way it was on Sundays after church at the Pine Crest Inn Buffet in Woodstock. All you could eat! That is Woodstock, Ga., 30188.(art by Jack Davis (MAD)). OOPS! CORRECTION: Pine Crest in was not in Woodstock, Ga. at all, it was up the road several miles in the Holly Springs, Canton area. Nothing like cold hard facts to ruin a good joke.

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! MAD Magazine #25 looks at BASEBALL

 This is just a little off course, maybe just a few weeks.

Torn from the pages of MAD Magazine #25, written by editor Harvey Kurtzman and illustrated by Atlanta's own Jack Davis.

Remember to click on each page to make it bigger and hopefully understandable  and funny..

Paper Airplanes and the Dam

 

Here are two airborne true adventures:

I'll tell you the time we went to Allatoona Dam and airborned several paper airplanes. I told this story before, so if it seems you have heard it before, you probably have. They year was about 1960. My friend Sam Carsley's (1941 - 2013) was a freshman at Georgia Tech.

One day Sam came to my house with a cardboard box with no top. In the box was a neat stack of plain paper. Sam did every thing extremely neat and well organized.

In class he had learned some about aero dynamics and wanted to experiment. We drove to Allatoona Dam and walked up the steep cement steps to the top. On the edge of the damn, or the Eowah River side Sam neatly made paper airplanes we tossed them over the side. Which, I suppose we could have been arrested for littering if caught, but we didn't think about that.

Sam knew what would happen but wanted to see it. The west wind coming down the Etowah River Valley would swoosh up when it hit the dam. And when it swooshed up it would catch the paper airplanes we had just contributed to it and carry it high up in the air, sometimes almost out of sight. Some planes hitched rides with other high winds and went to points unknown and some fell back down only to be caught b another westward wind swooshing up the damn and be carried back up, over and over.

I don't know if they are still rising and falling or not.

We should have put messages on the paper airplanes that sailed off to points unknown.

Another time at Tech Sam learned about Einstein's Theory of Relativity, E=MC(2). He said in its simplest form one might understand. He said if you are riding on a bus standing in the aisle and say you put a big X on the floor that you are standing on. And while the bus is moving you jump up and come back down. You should come down on the X. Because you are moving forward at the same rate of speed as the bus.

So, with that in mind, if you are in a convertible and throw a beer can up in the air and stop suddenly the beer can is traveling the same speed as the car, and if the car stopped it will land in front of the car. Sam had a 1956 Chevrolet convertible he had just bought from Anderson Motor Company. We went to Paulding County, on the dirt deserted roads behind the drive-in theater and the Dallas Drag Strip, which I knew the roads well from slipping in both at different times.

We chose the far out deserted place because nothing seemed more terrible to Sam as being caught breaking the rules.

Out on the dirt road in the night time we built up a speed of maybe 35 or about mph, and I tossed a half can of beer straight up at the same time Sam slammed on the brakes.

WHOMP!!! The half can of beer hit his hood and put a little dent in it.

That was the end of our Mr. Wizard-style experiments

Paper Route Business

 

Art by Jack David (MAD) TOUR OF PART OF MY PAPER ROUTE. II know that area fairly well. Also on South Avenue my cousin Anthony Rollins and his mother and our grandmother lived on South Avenue. Anthony retired from the Cobb County Sheriff Dept as a Lt. head of the crime lab. Also Jack and Neal Barfield and the Wallace Brothers (all cousins) lived on South Avenue, I did not know them from my paper route but from Little League.

On down South Avenue on the corner of Frazer Street was a man who owned a restaurant on th 4-Lane close to Hodge Brothers Army Surplus store. He kept a spider monkey in his front yard on a chain. I used to buy candy at Yancy's Store one block away and toss them to the monkey. He ate up most of my profit. Cati-corner from him was Jackie Davidson, who was a majorette in high school, about a year or two ahead of us. Her father was head of the water department.. Next door to the Davidson's was a man in a wheelchair named Grady. I took the route over from Raymond "Snookey" Partain. Snookey left Grady a free paper every day. Between him and the monkey I was being bled dry. Finally I cut out his free paper. But I didn't cut off the monkey's candy. Across the street from Grady was a 4 apartment building. It didn't take me long to figure out that a part time sports writer for the Marietta Journal was having an affair with a lady living in one of the apartments on the second floor.

Back at the corner of Frazer and Alexander Streets the second house up Robert Brooks and his wife Jo Ann White lived there. Jo Ann and I are almost related, we have common relatives. (she is Larry White's sister). In a few years Robert and I would be co-workers at the Marietta Post Office.

About three houses up Betty Guthrie and her family lived. The lived at the corner of Frazer and Grover Street. The 2nd house down my friend Johnny Pascoe lived. On down the hills on Grover Street on the right Lawton Evans land his family lived. Lawton and I were on the same Little League team, Southern Discount. I remember he took his sport seriously and would pitch a fit and cry when we lost.

Back on Frazer Street, going back the other way: After we cross over South Avenue there were some more apartments. same floor plan as the ones on South Avenue. I remember one cold and windy day at one of these apartment buildings on the ground floor I was collecting. Then the weekly subscription rate was 47 cents and I hoped they would give me two quarters and tell me to keep the change. Anyway, as I was saying, I knocked on the door of an apartment on the ground floor. The door to the apartment was next to the door going outside, which for whatever reason was opened. I knocked on the door and the lady came to the door. She had a housecoat on. I told her "Collecting for the Atlanta Journal and she went back, got her wallet, and came back. As she was paying me a big gush of wind blasted through the opened outside door and lifted her housecoat up past her waist. She had no panties on. It was the first time I saw the female anatomy. GOOD GOD!!

Over the next few days I told all my neighborhood friends that I thought would be interested.

The next collection day four or five of my friends met me and walked with me on my collection rounds.

At the apartment door where the lady's housecoat flew up I think looked surprised with a bunch of preteen boys looking eagerly at her.

Boys will be boys

Petty Family Pictures, Taken the same Day I think

 vFirst picture: This is the our Petty family at their farm in the "Red Hills", aka near Cohutta, in Murray County, Ga., c1937. Left to right: In front: Sarah and Leonard Petty

Second Row: Janie Petty (and maybe Hunter), Viola Ridley Petty (Mother or mother-in-law to all there), Roy Petty, Opal Petty, and Osmo Petty.

In back: Mary Jo Johns and Tom Petty (the only married couple in the picture). Missing are Georgia Petty Grant and Wallace Petty.

The second picture was apparently taken the same day, by the same clothes. The people are the same the addition of Wallace in the top right corner.

William A. Trammell, William A. Hunter, Same Person

 

William A. Trammell and William A. Hunter, same person.

My sister Frances and I had the unique pleasure of living with our grandfather Frank Paris Hunter for almost 2 years, along with our parents. Of course. During that time he taught me how to stay balanced on a bike, and other adolescent skills. He kept his “hooch” under the house. One time when he was loaded he told me he did not know our real last name, because his father was adopted and took the name of his adopted family

I remembered that. About 25 years later when Rocky, my oldest son was born, I decided to get into genealogy to find our real surname and our heritage

I knew already my grandfather William’s name on his Tombstone was William A. Hunter and born in 1842. And somehow it was common family knowledge that he was born in Franklin, Macon County, North Carolina.

The Georgia Room of the Cobb County Library had census microfilms. Censuses are taken every ten years, like the last census was 2020 and the next one will be 2030.

The census report each family member by name and age. I got the 1850 Census of Macon County and looked name by name for a William Hunter, age about 8. I couldn’t find a such name. I went through it again, it was not there.

It was common family knowledge that his wife was Emaline Ray, also a Macon County Native. I got a Macon County phone book (don’t ask me how) and saw there was about 30 to 40 Ray families listed. I wrote each Ray family telling them what I was looking for, namely Emaline Ray and enclosed a self-addressed, stamped envelope. My plan was do 10 a week. Some Rays used the self-addressed-stamped envelope to wish me luck. About half-way through it I received a letter with the letterhead RAY’S SMOKED HAMS. He said he did not know, but he thought his cousin probably would because he was into family history. He said I wouldn’t have written him because he doesn’t have a phone. He gave me his address, which was Otto, NC, which is also in Macon County. I wrote him and he replied, which said something like this:

“Your grandfather was William A. Trammell.. He and his brother Van killed a man and they were wanted for murder and escaped to Texas.”

First of all, he was my great grandfather, not my grandfather. I went back and looked at the 1850 census and sure’nuff found a William A. Trammell, age 8, living with his grandfather Jacob Trammell, and a bunch of kids, including a Jacob Van Buen Trammell. So, Van was his uncle, not his brother.

I knew William fought in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. His name is listed as a CSA soldier. In fact, I found his company:

William joined the Confederacy. On, 1 May 1862, he enlisted in Macon County, North Carolina, into the 39th North Carolina Infantry, Company I. He was nineteen years old. He enlisted with the name he had used since birth - William A. TRAMMELL.

The first year of his war efforts has yet been uncovered. On 19 May 1863, he was admitted to the First Mississippi C. S. A. Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, for Febris Intermiten Quotidian. In layman terms he was having a reoccurring fever daily. He returned to duty 25 June 1863 after spending a month and six days in the hospital.

While on furlough, 19 April 1864, William A. TRAMMELL and Emaline RAY married. William was twenty-one and Emaline was eighteen just one week.

Shortly after they were married William returned to his Unit. The Unit went to be part of the "Battle of Kennesaw Mountain", near Marietta, Georgia.

Note- About one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five years later over a hundred of William and Emaline's descendants would be living within a few miles of Kennesaw Mountain.

William's unit, the 39th Regiment, Company I, was fixed on the crest between Big Kennesaw Mountain and Little Kennesaw Mountain.

His bosses:

Corps - Loring

Division - French

Brigade - Ector

William and two of his friends were at a spring kneeling down drinking water. Shots. One of his friends dropped with a bullet hole in his head. He and his remaining living friend got up to run. More shots. William was shot in the leg. He fell while his friend fled. The boys in blue ran by him in pursuit of his friend, evidently assuming he was dead.

According to the records William was shot in the knee July 18, 1864. That, incidentally, was the same day that the President of the Confederacy fired General Joseph E. Johnston of that campaign and replaced him with General Hood.

On his questionnaire for a pension a question was what date he was wounded and William replied "July 18, 1864". Another question asked where was his unit at the time he was shot and he replied "Peachtree Creek" (Atlanta) which is historically accurate. Unfortunately, the questionnaire did not ask the applicant where he was when he shot, only where his unit was, which could be two different places.

A note: There are eight active springs on Kennesaw Mountain and several dried up ones.

Peachtree Creek or Kennesaw Mountain? Or Chickamauga, Georgia?

Ms Thelma Swanson, a TRAMMELL/RAY descendent/researcher, found that the North Carolina Troops Roster, page 108, shows that he was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia.

The Chickamauga Battle was held in the Northwest corner of Georgia, September 19th and 20th, 1863. I personally think this

could be another William TRAMMELL listed (Mrs. Swanson later stated that it could have been William K. TRAMMELL wounded at Chicamauga).

On August 6, 1864, William appeared on a receipt roll at Marshall Hospital in Columbus, Georgia.

He was put on wounded furlough. He told his grandchildren that he recuperated in a private home in Andersonville, Georgia.

Andersonville was not far from the Marshall Hospital in Columbus (about 20 to 30 miles). The Andersonville Confederate Center had the facilities for a hospital and a prison. The cruel conditions at Andersonville Prison still shock people. Men were forced to suffer and die in painful and cruel ways just for fighting in a cause they believed in or had to fight. Some of the prisons in the North were just as bad - one that comes to mind is Camp Chase, Ohio.

Another academic question: Which Andersonville? During the Civil War times there was a Andersonville Community in Cobb County at the northern border of Cherokee County, where Highway 92 is today, only about three or four miles east of where he eventually settled in Woodstock.

He said that in that private home where he recuperated the lady that nursed him was named Amanda Jane. A few years later he would honor that lady by naming his only daughter after her.

After he got well enough he somehow gained possession of a mule and walked (or limped) back home to Macon County, North Carolina, which if the Andersonville was in Cobb-Cherokee County it would be slightly over a hundred miles away, if the Andersonville was in Southwest Georgia it would be close to three hundred miles away.

Apparently, he arrived home before November 1864 (based on the incubation period and birth date of their first born Charles). He was about twenty-two when he returned from the War.

For the next couple of years William and Emaline lived just south of Franklin, North Carolina and had two children.

Posey C. Wild was a close friend. He was the close friend who was with William at the time he was shot by Union Soldiers by the spring, and was lucky to flee with his life. After that event,

10 August 1864, Posey was promoted to Second Lieutenant.

Another close person to William was his uncle Jacob Van Buren "Van" TRAMMELL. Van was only a few years older than William and they lived in the same household during their childhood lives. With William and Van living in the same house; with the same last name; and close to the same age - some thought they were brothers.

With that, this story has been handed down through the generations in the RAY Family:

"Van TRAMMELL and his brother William were trying to collect pay for a horse that had been stolen from William. The man refused to pay. William hit the man with a gun and killed him. Van left for Arkansas and William for Georgia."

The man who William and his uncle Van Trammell killed was named Lambert. - Surname TRAMMELL from nformation submitted by Darlene Lackey. June 18, 2004, posting no. 1405.

Actually, Van went to Round Prairie Township, Benton County, Arkansas.

The William A. HUNTER family went to Texas. In Texas, William acquired "twelve or fifteen" tracts of land and tried being a cattle rancher. He had problems supplying water and had to give it up.

William Trammell and family returned to where he recuperated but changed their family name to Hunter.

Then upon more research over court records I found that in 1842 Rebecca Trammell sued the city of Franklin’s town Constable for Bastardy. The judge said Jason Henderson Hunter would have to pay $100 a year in child support.

Jason and his family left town rather hurriedly.

I’m quiet sure Jason Henderson Hunter and Rebecca Trammell are Willilam Hunter/Trammell’s parents.

Jason Henderson Hunter had an interesting life. He was a Federal Soldier during the infamous “Trail of Tears” in about 1838. Franklin, NC; Cape Giraldo, Ms, and Greene Co., Ak were all big gathering places for the Native Americans. Strangely, Jason moved to Macon County, NC, Cape Giraldo, Mo, and Greene County . Ak

In the Civil War Jason Henderson Hunter formed his on company which he commissioned himself “Colonel” His expertise was battling Yankee Gunships on the Mississippi River. His immediate officer over him was “Swamp Fox” Thompson who organized she short lived Poney Express.

He was a state representative of Greene County, Arkansas and another time Bolinger County, Mo.

Probably what will ad up mostly in his heritage is his fertilization He had 3 wives, at least 4 mistresses and over 20 Children

Herman Talmage more mileage

 Getting more mileage out of pictures: Herman Talmage making a political speech on the Marietta Square July the 4th mid 1980s.

Eric England, Snapper

 Here is my favorite Marine story copied and pasted from my ramblings:

In 2008, we went to the Descendants of John Hunter Reunion in Blairsville, Georgia. We have been going to this reunion, off and on, at Track Rock Campgrounds since1980. There I always see some distant cousins I got to know at a earlier reunion and get to meet some I haven't met before.

In 2008 I met a distant cousin that I did not remember his name after he told me. I took the above picture that day. He had on a Marine cap. I asked him where all he served and he told me. When one of the places he said, was THE USS NEWPORT NEWS I lit up. I did too! I asked when, when he gave the dates and I said I was there part of that time, January 1965. He was part of the Marine detachment there.

It is small world, we were cousins on the same ship in the city of Jacksonville, Florida, Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, Mississippi River, and the City of New Orleans and did not know we were blood kin.

Later another distant cousin, Bob Reece, from Blairsville and Marietta and I became Facebook friends and we are related the same way the Marine and I are related, descendants of John Hunter (1775-1848).

I sent Bob the same picture above and asked him if he knew this man, since they both were Blairsville natives. He said the face look familiar, he would have to think about it.

Then months later Bob wrote:

Eddie, I just realized who this guy is. It's Eric England. He is a legendary Marine. Sniper with a huge amount of kills. If he is related to you, you should research him. Top marksman in the Marine Corps for years

SUNDAY FUNNIES!! HELP Magazine, BERLIN

Reporter and Art by Arnold Roth.

Many years ago in another history zone.

Mother & Child Chickens

 Mother and Child. I like this picture. I took it about 1976 when I got a knew camera and I took pictures of everything that moved (or didn’t move). This mother and child duo belonged to my father-in-law. He had a chicken coop with limbs running across to roost on, his free range chicken knew exactly what to do.

Two Eddies Fighting

 

I came across this picture and it bought back memories. The house a couple years ago was burned down in a fire department training exercise. It was on Glover Street at the corner of Manget Street.

I lived on Manget Street with my family from about age 7 to age 14, with my grandfather. But Glover Street wad my hangout. All my friends lived on Glover Street. Then Glover Street was dotted with old houses and a country store. Now, only one residence house is there, the rest is warehouses, Cobb County Board of Education, and at least two auto shops

Back to the early 1950s: The Rich family lived in this house. Their side yard became a hangout for teenagers. The teenage boys openly smoked, cursed, and were full of wise-cracks: I was envious.

I think most of them had quit school. They were also up to no good. Several of us younger kids, about 10 or 11 years old hung out on the edge of their bunch trying to pickup on their lingo; we were street corner hangout trainees.

Another kid, about a year old, also named Eddie came often to Glove Street to visit his grandparents and stay a few days each time. He lived in Douglasville. Eddie was mentally challenged.

The teenagers, picking up on Eddie was not all there, thought they would have a little fun told Eddie I said some bad things about him. Eddie and I were like dogs in a dog fight to them, nothing more.

Eddie came at me swinging. With one hand. Eddie had a nervous problem, when he got nervous he was put his mouth on the back of his hand and slobber on it. With one arm he was swinging with the other hand in his mouth, he was not protecting his face. I hit him one hit in the face. Blood ran from his nose. He ran down the street to his grandparents. Ian home too.

The teenagers told me his big sister came walked back up very angry wanting to know who broke her brother’s nose. They told me they covered for me. She wanted to call the police on whoever did it.

I thought I got away with it. Months later I saw Eddie and he was friendly. Apparently he had forgot about it.

Then we went behind his grandparent’s house into their barn. We climbed up in the loft. I did not know it at the moment the plywood floor was not nailed down, The wide boards just laid unnailed across the rafters.

Then one of my “friends” reminded Eddie I was the one who blooded his nose. Suddenly Eddie pounced on top of me and started choking me. I could not breath. I thought I was going to be killed right then.

Then, my Guardian Angel must have stepped up to give me a helping hand.

With us scuffling around on the plywood that was not nailed down, one end shifted away from the top of the rafter it rested on, then tilted down towards the barn’s dirt floor and dumped us like a dump truck.

I hit the floor running. And ran home.

About a year after that Tony Hester’s mother took Tony, Gene Sanges, and me to Douglasville to visit Eddie. Mrs. Hester must have been friends with Eddie’s family. I think Eddie’s parents were dead and he lived with his uncle and aunt on a chicken farm. Eddie showed us all about egg cleaning and the machines that sorted the eggs. Eddie was learning a trade, good for him.

We also Walked over the farm through the cattle lazily hanging out. There was a big water hole for the cattle. I thought “What if Tony or Gene remind Eddie about the broken nose again?” I didn’t get close to the water and made sure I had a clear running area in front of me. The day ended peacefully.

About ten years ago I ran into a Glover Street friend back then and we played “what ever happed to…?” I asked about Eddie. My friend told me he heard Eddie was in prison with a lifetime sentence for murder. Gulp! I could have been Exhibit A.

Strand Theater Changing With the Times

 There is a beautifully decorated door/entrance on the east side of the Strand Theatre that some may not know the history of.... before desegregation, this was the "Colored Only" entrance to the Strand that led up to the 2nd Floor Balcony where they were only allowed to sit during a performance.... as a kid, I always thought this odd because my friends and I always wanted to sit in the balcony when we went. Loved it up there looking out over the theatre.

Opal's Varnell House & Perriwinkles

 This was my Aunt Opel’s, her son Anthony’s and Grandma Petty’s home in Varnell, Georgia. They lived there in the late 40s and maybe early 50s. I think I took this picture in the early 80s. Since it has been bulldozed and replaced with a used car lot. I also noticed that that the house next door, the preachers house was about to rot away.

As I remember they did not have running water. There was a very clean spring behind their house. I remember the spring had little black shell creatures periwinkles that kept the water cleaned. Once I carried my two sons to the house and to the spring. We scooped up a handful of periwinkles and put them in a jar with clean water. By the time we got home, in about 90 minutes the periwinkles had met their doom, they were dried up and floating on top. We messed with the natural order of things.

Grandpa Frank Paris Hunter (1879-1950)

 

ttn Hunter 1st cousins. I’m playing with a handheld scanner. This scanned picture is our grandfather Frank Paris Hunter (1879-1950). It looks like it was probably taken about 1900.

He saved my life once, I was by a fireplace, caught afire and he threw me down and rolled me.

Pettys Posing at Red Hills Home

 vPetty family in the "Red Hills" near Cohutta, Ga, in the late 1930s or early 40s Lt R: 1st row: Osmo, Opal, Thelma (Cox), Wallace. 2nd row: Cecil Grant, Georgia, Walt (Ridley) Janie (Hunter, Mama), Viola (Grandma Petty(Ridley)), MaryJo (Johns), and Tom. Row 3:Leonard. Again, Roy was either taking the picture or off to war, I think the latter.

Manget Street

Above Minnie & Frank Hunter on Manget Street

Jones/possibly Manget Familyl House

Manget & Waterman Streets my paper route)

At this corner a friend named Frankie Hunter, my age, lived (no relation).  His father's name is Francis Hunter.  I wonder if my grandfather Frank Hunter who lived near the other end of Manget and these Hunters (from Boston) mail was ever mixed up?

Frank's father Francis was hot tempered.  One time he and his wife was showing out of town visitors Underground Atlanta they were approached in the parking lot by two men with guns to hold them up.  Francis whipped both men and held them for the police.

The last I heard they moved to New Orleans and my buddy Frank was studying to be a Catholic Deacon.

The other side of the duplex had a high ham operator's radio tower.  He took his hobby seriously.

Manget Family Plot Marietta City Cemetery included Fred Proper, Missionary to China 1909-1949, (1880-1979)

Flipping through UGA’s magazine GEORGIA I came across an article titled RHODES TO SUCCESS.  The article was about UGA students  who also were RHODES SCHOLARS.  I combed the article carefully looking for my name (joking), seriously, for a name I might know of.  UREKA!  I came across Fred F. Manget, AB, ’73.

Before then Fred Prosper Manget (21 January 1880 – 21 January 1979) was an American doctor, public servant, and medical missionary. He served for forty years in China .

Fred’s father or grandfather was a professor or a minister at the Marietta Military Academy on Powder Springs Street.  The military academy played a crucial part of supplying officers to the Confederate Army.

The short paragraph said Fred Manget returned from Oxford and attended law school at Vanderbuilt University before joining the Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s Corps.  He also had a 25 year career in the Central Intelligence Agency before retiring to High Point, North Carolina.

The reason I perked up when I saw the name Manget is We lived on Manget Street in Marietta for about 10 years.  Manget is a rare name you do not see that often.My grandparents, Frank and Minnie Tyson Hunter, bought their house on Manget Street sometime after 1920.  Overall they had 9 kids, 8 sons and 1 daughter. But in age they wee spread out, the older ones had moved our when younger ones were one. After my grandmother died in 1948 we moved in.

I think the reason they lived on Manget Street was that Frank worked at Glover Machinery as mechanic, which was just around the corner, less distance if you take a short cut through the woods.  As his sons grew into adulthood he got them jobs at Glover’s too.

Manget is not pronounced like it looks.  It sounds like “Monjay”.  Is French.  I think Victor Manget came to Marietta as a professor and doctor of divinity at Georgia Military Academy.

I think the Manget family lived in the 2-storied house at the corner of East Dixie Ave and Manget Sreet.  During my tenue at Manget Street the Jones family lived in the 2 storied house.  In the back was a persimmon tree that we loved to pick up the fruit.  The berries tasted horrible and made your mouth dry up instantly, but they were great for rabbit and opossum traps.  Behind the tree was an old barn.  Elderly neighbors said the old barn was where Mr Manget beat his wife and today in the nighttime you could still hear her cry out.  (I seriously doubt that).

Manget Street is blocks long.  It starts at Glover Street  and went all the way to Waterman Street about .75 to .9 mile long.  The south part of Manget Street from the Clay Street corner to the Glove Street corner completely bordered the west side of Larry Bell Park.  The Hunter front yard had a panoramic  of the park. 

My grandmother Minnie Victoria Tyson Hunter, wife of Frank Paris Hunter, died 21 July 1948, at age 68.  We moved in with my grandfather, on Manget Street, so he would not be alone.  I remember it was apparently his job, or so he felt, to wake up before everybody else to butter the bread, to get it ready to toast.  I am an early riser and was awake shortly after Grandpa.  There was a fireplace in the living room, heated by coal.  If it was a cold morning he would start the fireplace.  One cold morning I backed up to he flaming fireplace and a spark popped out and lit my pajamas afire.  Grandpa grabbed me and thew me down, which put out the fire.  He saved my life.

The first property on Manget Street is a small Baptist named Mary Baptist Church,  Backed up to the back of the church was the Hobby family barn.  They lived on Glover Street.  The Hobbys were Catholic.  Their neighbors disliked Catholics and got up a petition against them demanding that they move.  They did not leave and the petitioners decided to accept them.  My family were close to the Hobbys.  Their sons Mike and George and I one Sunday night, out of curiosity, climbed on top of the roof of their barn to sit in the dark and watch the Mary Church Sunday night services.  It surprised me to see some gospel singers, who leaders were Tom & Mary Jo Petty, my mother’s brother and sister-in-law.

Grandpa Hunter drank secretly.  Well, secretly, except for me.  He kept his bottle under the house but was too old to crawl under the house for a nip so I helped y retrieving  it for him.  He had a bunch of buddies who were about his age, always walking.  They visited him from time to time.  I think they were his whiskey runners.  I think they were old retired cronies from Glover’s.

When I got a new bike for Christmas, he taught me how to ride it.  He pushed me, keeping the bike balanced, then let go and hollered for me to pedal!

One time while under the influence he started crying.  He told me he did not really know what our last name is.  His father was adopted.  Many years later when my oldest son Rocky was born I remembered what he told me and started researching genealogy.  Frank was partially right.  His father grew up with the last name Trammell, because that was his mother Rebecca’s surname, which was his grandparents’ surname.    He married and enlisted in the Confederacy with the last name Trammell, but after the war he and his uncle Van Trammell was wanted for murder so he changed his last name to Hunter.  Which was only right because his mother, when he was born, sued Jason Henderson Hunter for Bastardy.   Jason was he local constable and was sued more than once for bastrardy by some of the local young women.   She won, and Jason was ordered to pay child support of $100 annually.  His father should have been going by William Hunter the whole time.

William Jason Hunter and his legitimate moved to Missouri. Possibly to prevent paying that annual $100 child support’

One time Grandpa and I were sitting in the front yard a pickup truck drove up and parked on the street.  A young lady got out and asked Grandpa was his name Frank Hunter.  He said he was and she said it was nice to meet him, she was his daughter.  They talked out of range of my hearing.  Then she got into her truck and drove away, never to be heard of again.  Which triggered Grandpa to start drinking and crying.  Mama got on the phone telling Hunter kin.  Grandpa’s oldest son came over smiling ear to ear and kidded his father about his previous life catching up with him.

What happened.  After my grandparents were married and even had their first child and they were living in Woodstock Grandpa had a fling with a girl with the last name McClure.  When it was discovered the McClure girl was pregnant a meeting was held with the Hunter, McClure, an Tyson parents.  They all agreed it should be a secret.  I think all concerned probably chipped in monetarily to send the McClure girl to Texas to live with relatives and have her baby.

In doing family research I found that after Frank and Minnie’s oldest was born they moved to Hunt County Texas and lived about a year.  I wonder if that was connected to the out of wedlock affair?

The northern part of the of Manget was middle income kind of houses which included duplexes and apartment buildings, 4 apartments per building.  And the south part of Manget were older houses, some with chickens in the backyard along with outhouses.  I don’t think now there are any residence home on the south side; warehouses and mechanic garages. 

Now, the Hunter yard is paved over and is surrounded by a chain-link fence with cars and cars carriers, apparently it is a home for impounded cars.

The Manget family was a well traveled international family.  One was an Ambassador to China.  I doubt if there was any wife beating.

Manget Street was the nest of my formative years, which I almost did not make it through.  At the very south end on the corner of Manget and Glover streets was a yard that a bunch of smoking teenagers hung out at.  I found them interesting.  One day they sicced a guy also named Eddie about a year older onto me, telling him I called him names, which I did not.  We got into a fist fight and he did not know anything about fighting.  I popped him in the nose and blood went everywhere and he ran to his grandparents home crying.  After I left his big sister came looking for whom ever gave Eddie a bloody nose.  She wanted to swear out a warrant.  The gang said they did not know who I was.  About a year later a bunch of us were playing in Eddie’s grandfather’s barn’s loft and a so-called friend reminded Eddie of the time I gave him a bloody nose.  He had forgotten.  But now then reminded.  He bounced on me and started choking me.  He was very strong and I thought I was about to die.  Then, God stepped in.  The floor of the loft was of lose boards laid across the rafters.  We were on the end of a couple of boards which at the right moment tilted because of our weight, and send us to the barn’s floor.  I  jumped up like a jack rabbit and ran home.  I asked an old friend a couple yeas ago what happened to Eddie and he said he was in prison for murder.

Another time, across the street from us on the edge of Larry Bell Park was a long gulley.  It was lined with small tall trees.  I found I could climb one tree and with my weight make it swing and then I could grab another tree and shimmy down the second tree.  I was impressed with my trick and demonstrated to my friend Tony and somebody else, I forgot who.  I climbed the tree, got it swinging and the top of the tree, with me in it, snapped into.  I fell and was knocked out.  Tony and friend thought I was joking.  They got his wagon and put me in it.  They carried me down to Tony’s house where fhis two younger sister were playing and told me if I did not get up they would take off my clothes in front of the sisters.  I didn’t get up so they took my clothes off.  Then they thought I had to be dead.  So they pulled the wagon and me home and nobody were there.  Back then, nobody locked their doors.  They put me in my bed and left.

I was in the 7^th grade at Waterman Street School from September 1953 to May 1954.  Once in this time period one evening after dark I learned that bats were attacking flying bugs under the street light in front of our house on Manget Street.  They would swoop down under the light and snatch a bug and disappear in the dark.  I already knew bats use radar to attack their prey.  For the fun of it, one evening I caried a handful of pebbles out front under the street light.  I lobbed up a pebble and sure enough a bat dove.  A car speeding by hit it.  I heard the “thump!”

After the car drove out sight I ran over and found the bat. Knocked out or dead.  I forgot what I did with it overnight.  The following morning I put it is an orange color  citrus webbed bag.  I carried it to school.  My teacher, Mrs. King, was going to be impressed, I just knew.

Outside 7B Class door I stood beside two female classmates waiting on the 8 O’Clock bell to ring so we could enter the class.  To them, I bragged how I caught it.  I lifted the towel to show them.  About the time I lifted the towel the little bat looked up, just squeezed out of webb bag.  It jumped up and took flight. 

I think it was blind and kept bumping into the walls.  Girls started screaming.  Miss Whitehead, the principal and Cliff the custodian chased the bat flying panicking around.

After the bat was subdued Miss Whitehead bent down eye level to me and chewed me out good.  Her face was red and expression was terror and hate.

Whew! 

I delivered The Atlanta Journal daily newspaper to the area of Manget Street near Waterman Street.

At the intersection of Manget and  Frasier Streets rows of apartment building met.  Also it is where I received my bundles of Atlanta Journal newspapers to deliver each day.  The first floor apartment of the closest one lived a family with a discontent wife.  She would walk by and flirt with me and whatever friend I had there.  She even showed us pictures of her poising near nude.  I remember her last name was Godfrey.  At the time my daddy was the chief of police.  He told me they found Mr. Godfrey in a patch of woods shot to death; suicide.  Daddy said his skin had turned black.  She and her kids moved soon after that, like a day or two.

I read later the area I delivered papers to was rated the number one crime section in Marietta.  The area was mostly duplex and apartment buildings, which my only guess low income came with a lot of domestic abuse calls to the law.  The city elite solved that problem by entification.  The same with the Clay Homes.

We moved to Richard Street in 1955.   Before we moved, maybe a year or so before, being so influenced with MAD Comicbook, I decorated my bedroom with figures cut out of various magaines.  Like a diving board with kids jumping off it and underneath in a pool the monster in the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea was below in a pool of water with his hands out, and many more little clippings interacting with other clippings.

A man named Todd came and looked the house over.  He stood in front of my bedroom wall studying all the pictures taped to the wall and my mother said we would take down the pictures if he bought the house.  Todd said, “If you don’t, I’ll buy it.”  Which he did.

I knew of Todd already.  He boarded with my friend Van’s aunt in Pine Forest.  I knew he was an eccentric person.   Todd only got to live in the house a few years.  He went to prison for sexually molesting a young man.